Even the word Italian only emerged slowly over time. It was not until the 13th century that the word “Italiani” started to be used by people outside Italy to describe the people that lived in the peninsula. This tells us something of the realities of a peninsula which only recently saw itself as a single country. In this land of many countries, the Italian phrase “mio paese” meant both your home village and the nation to which you belonged. As we entered the new millennium Italian was becoming the primary living language of a majority of Italians. The Italian National Institute of Statistics reported that by 2012 53% of Italians were predominantly speaking Italian in the family home. Their first language was their regional, and often local, language. Indeed, until the most recent generations, Italian was, at best, a second language for most Italians. Even up until 1951, less than 20% of Italians used Italian exclusively in their daily life. It is indeed little known that when the country of Italy did finally come into being in 1861 about 2.5% of her people spoke what we today call Italian. Yet, not too long ago neither were there any “Italians” in the way we understand it today and nor was there a single “Italian” language.
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